


This is What the Wolves Were Doing

by wanttobeatree



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Identity Issues, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-07
Updated: 2011-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-15 11:54:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanttobeatree/pseuds/wanttobeatree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the missing year, Sam has a visit from someone he used to know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is What the Wolves Were Doing

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ.

You are staring at yourself. Your face in the mirror. A nose. A bruise on your cheekbone. A scratch on your cheek. Hair across your forehead and tucked behind your ears. Hands on the edge of the sink. Your lips move when you move your lips.

You say, “Hello. Hello.”

You are very, very cold.

 

 

You know how to fight monsters and so you fight monsters. It doesn’t feel like fighting. You remember how to flex your fingers, you remember how to throw a punch and block a kick, and how to walk, and how to talk, and you remember your brother. You remember everything. It feels like your body is so much bone and muscle and skin, and these things are slow and heavy things. Just another cage. Just another cage again and so you fight monsters.

 

 

You are staring at yourself and he is staring back at you.

You are staring at yourself. Your other self. A self who is three years younger and three years weaker and perhaps three times as dangerous because this is a you who is shaking in fury and who would do anything to not be so afraid. You are not afraid, but you remember the taste of it. Your other self came through a hole in the air and you think that you would sympathise with that. Three years ago you would have sympathised with that.

“Hi,” you say.

The you that is he still believes in his body and he lunges at you, with one fist reeling back and a snarl on his face that is pure instinct, pure sincerity. He says, “I know what you are, Trickster.”

You say, “Probably not.”

 

 

The cage had been vast. Lucifer had ripped you apart fingernail by fingernail and atom by atom, until there was nothing left of you but your heartbeat and your memories and finally they too had slowed and stopped. In the cage you were weightless. You were never afraid.

 

 

He sits on the hood of the car you stole. Hands shaking. A scrape across his right knuckle. His mouth is twisted tightly in a shape you can’t interpret. You think it means unhappiness. You sit on the ground and stare up at him. You wonder _did I always look like this._

“I shouldn’t be here,” he says again. Small, jerky movements in his jaw.

He is very human. You are very cold. You run your fingers through the grass and think about how loudly he had shouted, how loudly and violently upset he had been. The year he is living had been the worst year of your life. You can remember that.

“Don’t worry,” you tell him. “I don’t remember this happening, so you probably forget about it when you go back.”

He presses his hands into his face. You know the backs of your hands. You don’t know what is happening behind them.

“Dean is still alive,” he says into the palms of his hands, as if he can close his fingers on the words and hold on to them.

“He is.”

“Then what,” and he lifts his head, “are we doing here?”

You saw Dean two months ago. Sometimes you think about that moment. Sometimes when it is dark and you are shivering, you think about that moment. Now, you think about that moment. The grass, between your fingers.

“When you get back,” you say, slowly, “you have to keep hunting the Trickster. He’ll send you back to Wednesday. Don’t give up.”

He sniffs. He wipes a hand jerkily across his face. His whole body sags lower down the hood of your stolen car, sheer relief cutting whatever strings had held him rigidly in place. He says, “And Dean will be okay?”

You think about that moment.

You say, “Yes. He will be.”

 

 

There are things you don’t remember how to do. Shapes your face used to make. Sometimes you wonder if what Dean left behind in Hell you left behind too. Your other self is staring at you. He is touching your arm. His warm hands.

He is saying, “What about me? Will I be okay?”

“You?” Expel air so it sounds like laughter. “You’ll be just fine.”

You have your heartbeat. You have your memories. You have the border of skin that defines you. You have a brother still alive. Maybe when your other self has disappeared again, you will remember what it feels like to be lonely.

Fingernail by fingernail; atom by atom.


End file.
